moved home. Just like you.”
“I didn’t lose my job,” Claire said.
“Well, you don’t have one. You know what I mean,” Weezy said. Claire was sitting in her pajamas at ten thirty on a Tuesday morning, drinking coffee with her mom. Yes, it was pretty clear that she didn’t have a job.
“I’m just saying,” Weezy continued, “that it’s an epidemic, a trend. It’s the economy, of course, but still it’s interesting, isn’t it? All these adult children returning home again? Moving back in with their parents? It says something about this generation, I think. And our generation for welcoming you back.” Weezy looked off into the distance, thoughtful with this new revelation.
“You sound like Dad,” Claire said.
Weezy leaned forward in her chair and looked out the window at the house across the street. “For a while, I thought the younger Connors girl was living at home, but now I think she just stays there sometimes. I think she brings things to her parents, their groceries and all of that.”
“Hilary?” Claire asked. “Hilary still lives around here?”
Hilary and Sarah Connors had grown up across the street. They’d never been friends, but they knew each other and played with each other sometimes out of convenience. When Sarah went to college, she started dating this boy and eventually dropped out. There were rumors that he was a drug dealer, but no one really knew what was happening. Then Sarah and her boyfriend went on a crime spree through a neighboring suburb, shooting a gas station clerk and robbing seven different people, before the two of them holed up in an old hardware store that had closed down. The police surrounded them, until they heard a gunshot and then they stormed in to find that Sarah had shot her boyfriend in the head. It made national news, and reporters and police cars were outside of the Connors’ house for months.
“I can’t believe they still live there,” Claire said. She looked out at the house, a normal two-story brick house with yellow awnings. It looked dark and quiet.
“It’s their home,” Weezy said. “They shouldn’t feel like they have to run away.”
“I would. I would leave the town, leave the whole state, probably go all the way across the country. I’d go somewhere where people didn’t recognize my name and my face. Wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“It has to be so miserable there. To stay in that house with all of those memories.”
“Maybe they remember the good things that happened there.”
“Would that really be what you remember?”
“Some people don’t have the tools to start over when something like that happens,” Weezy said. “Some people could, but other people—they just stop, and stay where they are and that’s that.”
“Sarah was always weird,” Claire said. It was the first thing that she and Martha had agreed on after the strange and tragic day happened. “She was always a little off,” Martha had said. Sarah had been a year ahead of Martha in school, and Hilary was a year younger than Claire. There was one picture of the four girls playing in the backyard one summer, all in bathing suits, laughing and running through the sprinkler. Claire couldn’t remember it.
“It was the drugs,” Weezy said. “She got mixed up with the wrong people.” They’d had this exact conversation dozens of times since the whole thing had happened, but somehow it never got old.
“I guess,” Claire said. “Poor Hilary.” She imagined the girl grocery shopping, lugging bags over to the house that her parents didn’t leave. How creepy.
Sarah had once stolen a toy of Claire’s, a little plastic Care Bear that had been a Valentine’s Day present. Claire had asked Weezy if she could take it to school to show her friends, and Weezy said no, so Claire snuck it in her backpack in the morning. That night, when she realized that she’d forgotten it in her desk, she started to cry.
The next morning, Weezy walked into the classroom with her, assuring her that it would still be there, but it wasn’t. That day, on the playground, Sarah Connors had a little blue bear in her hand.
“That’s mine,” Claire yelled. She told the teachers, but no one could prove that Sarah had walked through the classroom and stolen the bear. She told Weezy that night, but there was nothing to be done.
“I told you not to take it to school,” Weezy said, as Claire cried. She was firm on this point, although when Claire woke up that Saturday, there was a new little blue